Opera and musical theater dominated French culture in the 1800s, and the influential stage music that emerged from this period helped make Paris, as Walter Benjamin put it, the “capital of the nineteenth century.” The fullest account available of this artistic ferment and its international impact, Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer explores the diverse institutions that shaped Parisian music and extended its influence across Europe, the Americas, and Australia.

The contributors to this volume, who work in fields ranging from literature to theater to musicology, focus on the city’s musical theater scene as a whole rather than on individual theaters or repertories. Their broad range enables their collective examination of the ways in which all aspects of performance and reception were affected by the transfer of works, performers, and management models from one environment to another. By focusing on this interplay between institutions and individuals, the authors illuminate the tension between institutional conventions and artistic creation during the heady period when Parisian stage music reached its zenith.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Annegret Fauser is professor of music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Mark Everist is professor of music at the University of Southampton.

REVIEWS

“Annegret Fauser and Mark Everist, both at the height of their games, have given us a book which those in many other fields of musicological study may envy in its scope and integrity. . . . This volume . . . is of inestimable value, not only to our own discipline, but to musicology in general and to the wider audience of cultural historians of France during the nineteenth century. For musicology, it is a beacon in its depth and breadth of conception, perception and inspiration, contributing hugely to our increasing, yet ever patchy understanding of artistic production and mediation in the Parisian theatrical milieu.”

— H-France Review

“Presented in a non-linear fashion, the chapters circle around many of the same themes and issues, but refracted through diverse contexts and approaches. Consequently, while each of the chapters may be enjoyed in isolation, read together, they present an especially vibrant and multifaceted history of nineteenth-century Parisian lyric theatre.”

— Cultural and Social History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

part i. Institutions

1. The Company at the Heart of the Operatic Institution: Chollet and the Changing Nature of Comic-Opera Role Types during the July Monarchy

Olivier Bara

2. Fromental Halévy within the Paris Opéra: Composition and Control

Diana R. Hallman

3. Systems Failure in Operatic Paris: The Acid Test of the Théâtre-Lyrique

Katharine Ellis

4. Jacques Offenbach: The Music of the Past and the Image of the Present

Opera and musical theater dominated French culture in the 1800s, and the influential stage music that emerged from this period helped make Paris, as Walter Benjamin put it, the “capital of the nineteenth century.” The fullest account available of this artistic ferment and its international impact, Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer explores the diverse institutions that shaped Parisian music and extended its influence across Europe, the Americas, and Australia.

The contributors to this volume, who work in fields ranging from literature to theater to musicology, focus on the city’s musical theater scene as a whole rather than on individual theaters or repertories. Their broad range enables their collective examination of the ways in which all aspects of performance and reception were affected by the transfer of works, performers, and management models from one environment to another. By focusing on this interplay between institutions and individuals, the authors illuminate the tension between institutional conventions and artistic creation during the heady period when Parisian stage music reached its zenith.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Annegret Fauser is professor of music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Mark Everist is professor of music at the University of Southampton.

REVIEWS

“Annegret Fauser and Mark Everist, both at the height of their games, have given us a book which those in many other fields of musicological study may envy in its scope and integrity. . . . This volume . . . is of inestimable value, not only to our own discipline, but to musicology in general and to the wider audience of cultural historians of France during the nineteenth century. For musicology, it is a beacon in its depth and breadth of conception, perception and inspiration, contributing hugely to our increasing, yet ever patchy understanding of artistic production and mediation in the Parisian theatrical milieu.”

— H-France Review

“Presented in a non-linear fashion, the chapters circle around many of the same themes and issues, but refracted through diverse contexts and approaches. Consequently, while each of the chapters may be enjoyed in isolation, read together, they present an especially vibrant and multifaceted history of nineteenth-century Parisian lyric theatre.”

— Cultural and Social History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

part i. Institutions

1. The Company at the Heart of the Operatic Institution: Chollet and the Changing Nature of Comic-Opera Role Types during the July Monarchy

Olivier Bara

2. Fromental Halévy within the Paris Opéra: Composition and Control

Diana R. Hallman

3. Systems Failure in Operatic Paris: The Acid Test of the Théâtre-Lyrique

Katharine Ellis

4. Jacques Offenbach: The Music of the Past and the Image of the Present